Chapter V: Part 5

“The sea-language,” says Sir William Monson in his “Naval Tracts,” “is not soon learned, and much less understood, being only proper to him that has served his apprenticeship; besides that, a boisterous sea and stormy weather will make a man not bred to it so sick that it bereaves him of legs, stomach, and courage so much as to fight with his meat; and in such weather, when he hears the seamen cry starboard or port, or to bide aloof,[33] or flat a sheet, or haul home a clew-line, he thinks he hears a barbarous speech, which he conceives not the meaning of.” This is as true now as then. But the landsman is not to blame. There is no dialect peculiar to a calling so crowded with strange words as the language of the sea. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who is never more diverting than when he thunders forth his abhorrence of naval life and of sailors as a community of persons, has in some cases perpetuated, and in some cases created, the most ludicrous errors regarding ships, their furniture and crews. If, as Macaulay declares, the Doctor was at the mercy of Junius and Skinner in many of his shore-going derivatives, he was equally at the mercy of Bailey and Harris when he came to the ocean. A few samples will suffice.

Footnote 33:

“Keep your luff!”

“_Topgallant_, the highest sail.” “_Topsail_, the highest sail.” The word topgallant, as Johnson prints it, is not a sail at all. Had Johnson defined the “topgallant-sail” as the highest sail, he would have been right; for in his day there was no canvas set above the topgallant yard. But it is manifest that if the “topgallant-sail” was the highest sail, the top-sail could not be the highest too. “_Tiller_, the rudder of a boat.” The proverbial schoolboy knows better than that. “_Shrouds_, the sail-ropes. It seems to be taken sometimes for the sails.” It is hardly necessary to say that the shrouds have nothing whatever to do with the sails. They are ropes—in Johnson’s day of hemp, in our time of wire—for the support of lower, top, and topgallant masts. “_Sheets._” This word he correctly defines, borrowing his definition from a dictionary. But he adds, “Dryden seems to understand it otherwise;” and quotes—

“Fierce Boreas drove against his flying sails,
And rent the _sheets_.”

It is very evident that Dryden perfectly understood the term as signifying the ropes at the clews or corners of sails. “_Quarter-deck_, the short upper deck.” This is as incorrect as “_Poop_, the hindmost part of the ship.” The poop lies aft, to be sure, but it is no more the hindmost part of the ship than the mizzen-mast is—any more than the quarter-deck need necessarily be “short” or “upper”—in the sense clearly intended by Johnson. “_Overhale_, to spread over.” Overhale then signified what is now meant by overhaul. To overhaul a rope is to drag it through a block; to overhaul a ship is to search her. It certainly does not mean “to spread over,” nor, in my judgment, does Spenser employ it in that sense in the triplet that Johnson appends. “_Loofed_, gone to a distance.” Loofed in Johnson’s day denoted a ship that had luffed—_i.e._ put her helm down to come closer to the wind. “_Keel_, the bottom of the ship.” No doubt the keel is at the bottom of the ship, but sailors would no more understand it as a ship’s bottom than they would accept the word “beam” as a definition of the word “deck.” Johnson gives “_helm_” as “the steerage, the rudder.” It is plain that he is here under the impression that “steerage” is pretty much the same as “steering.” In reality the helm is no more the rudder than it is the tiller, the wheel, the wheel-chains, or ropes and the relieving-tackles. It is a generic term, and means the whole apparatus by which a ship is steered. “_Belay_, to belay a rope; to splice; to mend a rope by laying one end over another.” To belay a rope is to make it fast.[34]

Footnote 34:

Bailey correctly defines this word: “to fasten any running rope so
that when it is haled it cannot run out again.” Either Johnson doubted
Bailey (whom he quotes nevertheless) as an authority, or consulted him
for his sea-words at capricious intervals.

These examples could be multiplied; but it is not my purpose to criticize Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. Yet, as it is admittedly the basis of most of the dictionaries in use, it is worth while calling attention to errors which have survived without question or correction into the later compilations.

These and the like blunders merely indicate the extreme difficulty that confronts, not indeed the etymologist—for I nowhere discover any signs of research in the direction of marine originals—but the plain definer of nautical words. The truth is, before a man undertakes to explain the language of sailors he should go to sea. It is only by mixing with sailors, by hearing and executing orders, that one can distinguish the shades of meaning amidst the scores of subtleties of the mariner’s speech. It is, of course, hard to explain what the sailor himself could not define save by the word he himself employs. Take, for example, “inboard” and “aboard.” You say of a man entering a ship that he has gone “aboard her;” of a boat hanging at the davits that it must be swung “inboard.” There is a nicety here difficult of discrimination, but it is fixed nevertheless. You would not say of a man in a ship that he is “inboard,” nor of davits that they must be slewed “aboard.” So of “aft” and “abaft.” They both mean the same thing, but they are not applied in the same way. A man is “aft” when he is on the quarter-deck or poop; you could not say he is “abaft.” But suppose him to be beyond the mizzen-mast, you would say “he is standing abaft the mizzen-mast,” not “he is standing aft it.”

Peculiarities of expression abound in sea-language to a degree not to be paralleled by the eccentricities of other vocational dialects. A man who sleeps in his bunk or hammock all night, or through his watch on deck, “lies in” or “sleeps in.” But neither term is applicable if he sleeps through his watch below. “Idlers,” as they are called, such as the cook, steward, butcher, and the like, are said to have “all night in”—that is, “all night _in_ their bunks or hammocks.” To “lay” is a word plentifully employed in directions which to a landsman should render its signification hopelessly bewildering. “This word ‘lay,’” says Richard Dana, in a note to “Two Years Before the Mast,” “which is in such general use on board ship, being used in giving orders instead of ‘go,’ as ‘_Lay_ forward!’ ‘Lay aft!’ ‘Lay aloft!’ etc., I do not understand to be the neuter verb _lie_ mis-pronounced, but to be the active verb ‘_lay_’ with the objective case understood, as ‘Lay _yourselves_ forward!’ ‘Lay _yourselves_ aft!’ etc. At all events, lay is an active verb at sea and means go.” It is, however, used in other senses, as to “lay up a rope,” “the ship lay along,” the old expression for a vessel pressed down by the force of the wind. Other terms strike the land-going ear as singular contradictions, such as “to _make_ land,” to “_fetch_ such and such a place”—_i.e._ to reach it by sailing, but properly to arrive at it by means of beating or tacking; “_jump_ aloft,” run aloft; “_tumble_ up,” come up from below; “bear a hand,” look sharp, make haste; “handsomely,” as in the expression, “Lower away handsomely!” meaning, lower away with judgment, but promptly; “bully,” a term of kindly greeting, as “Bully for you!”[35]

Footnote 35:

This and other terms must now be called Americanisms. But they are
Americanisms only as are other old words which the people of the
United States have preserved from the language of their English
forefathers, but which on this side of the water are obsolete, or
employed with a different meaning.

The difficulties of the lexicographer desiring the inclusion of nautical terms in his list are not a little increased by the sailor’s love of contractions, or his perversities of pronunciation. Let me cite a few examples. The word “treenail,” for instance—a wooden spike—in Jack’s mouth becomes “trunnel.” “To reach” is to sail along close-hauled; but the sailor calls it “ratch.” “Gunwale,” as everybody knows, is “gunnel,” and so spelt by the old marine writers. “Crossjack,” a sail that sets upon a yard called the “crossjack yard,” on the mizzen-mast, is pronounced “crojjeck.” The “strap” of a block is always termed “strop;” “streak,” a single range of planks running from one end of the ship or boat to the other, is “strake;” “to serve,” that is, to wind small stuff, such as spun-yarn, round a rope, is “to sarve.” The numerous contractions, however, are pre-eminently illustrative of the two distinctive qualities of the English sailor—nimbleness and alertness. Everything must be done quickly at sea: there is no time for sesquipedalianism. If there be a long word it must be shortened somehow. To spring, to jump, to leap, to tumble, to keep his eyes skinned, to hammer his fingers into fish-hooks: these are the things required of Jack. He dances, he sings, he drinks, he is in all senses a lively hearty; but underlying his intellectual and physical caper-cutting is deep perception of the sea as a mighty force, a remorseless foe. The matter seems trifling, yet the national character is in it.

A great number of words are used by sailors which are extremely disconcerting to landsmen, as apparently sheer violations of familiar sounds and the images they convey. To lash: ashore, this is to beat with a whip, to thrash; at sea it means to make anything fast by securing it with a rope. To foul: when a sailor speaks of one thing fouling another, he does not intend to say that one thing soils or dirties another, but that it has got mixed in a manner to make separation a difficulty. “Our ship drove and fouled a vessel astern.” A line is foul when it is twisted, when it jams in a block. “Seize” is to attach: it does not mean, “to grasp.” “Seizing” is the line or lanyard or small stuff by which anything is made fast. “Whip:” this word naturally conveys the idea of the implement for flogging, for driving; in reality, it signifies a line rove through a single block. “Whip it up!” hoist it up by means of the tackle called a whip. “Get it whipped!” get it hoisted by a whip. “Sweep” looks like a fellow who cleans a chimney; at sea it is a long oar. “Board” is not a plank, but the distance measured by a ship or vessel sailing on either tack, and beating against the wind before she puts her helm down for the next “ratch.” “Guy” has nothing to do with the fifth of November, nor with a person absurdly dressed, but is a rope used for steadying a boom. “Ribands” are pieces of timber nailed outside the ribs of a wooden ship. “Ear-rings” are ropes for reefing or for securing the upper corners of a sail to the yard-arms.

The bewilderment increases when Jack goes to zoology for terms. “Fox” is a lashing made by twisting rope-yarns together. “Spanish fox” is a single yarn untwisted and “laid up” the contrary way. “Monkey” is a heavy weight of iron used in shipbuilding for driving in long bolts. “Cat” is a tackle used for hoisting up the anchor. “Mouse” or “mousing” was formerly a ball of yarns fitted to the collars of stays. “To mouse” is to put turns of rope-yarn round the hook of a block to prevent it from slipping. “Spider” is an iron outrigger. “Lizard” is a piece of rope with a “thimble” spliced into it. “Whelps” are pieces of wood or iron bolted on the main-piece of a windlass, or on a winch. “Leech”[36] is the side-edge of a sail. “Sheepshank” is the name given to a manner of shortening a rope by hitches over a bight of its own part.

Footnote 36:

Sometimes spelt “leach,” and perhaps correctly. “To leach” formerly
signified to “cut up.” In a sense the “leach,” or “leech,” may be
taken as meaning the cut sides of the sail. Leach also meant “hard
work.”

Of such terms as these, how is the etymology to be come at? The name of the animal might have been suggested in a few cases, as in “lizard,” perhaps, by some dim or fanciful resemblance to it in the object that wanted a title. But “monkey,” “fox,” “cat,” and other such appellations, must have an origin referable to any other cause than that of their likeness to the creatures they are called after. It is possible that these names may be corruptions from Saxon and other terms expressive of totally different meanings. It will be supposed that “Spanish fox” comes from the Spaniards’ habit of using “foxes” formed of single yarns. We have, for example, “Spanish windlass,” as we have “French fake,” “French sennit,” etc. The derivatives of some words are suggested by their sounds. “Bowse,” pronounced “Bowce,” is a familiar call at sea. “Bowse it taut, lads!” “Take and bowse upon those halliards!” The men _pull off_ upon the rope and bow it by their action. It is therefore conceivable that “bowse” may have come from “bow,” “bows.”[37] “Dowse,” pronounced “dowce,” signifies to lower, to haul down suddenly. Also to extinguish, as “dowse the glim,” “put out the light.” The French word “_douce_” is probably the godfather here. But “rouse,” pronounced “rouce”? “Rouse it aft, boys!” It means, to drag smartly. Does it really signify what it looks to express—to “rouse up” the object that is to be handled? It is wonderful to note how, on the whole, the language of the sea has preserved its substance and sentiment through the many generations of seafarers down to the present period of iron plates and steel masts, of the propeller and the steam engine. The reason is that, great as has been the apparent change wrought in the body and fabric of ships since the days of the _Great Harry_ of the sixteenth century, and the _Royal George_ of the eighteenth century, the nomenclature of remote times still perfectly answers to a mass of nautical essentials, more especially as regards the masts, yards, rigging, and sails of a vessel. And another reason lies in the strong conservative spirit of the sailor. There was a loud outcry when the Admiralty many years ago condemned the term “larboard,” and ordered the word “port” to be substituted. The name was not to be abandoned without a violent struggle, and many throes of prejudice, on the part of the old salts. What was good enough for Hawkins, Duncan, Howe, Rodney, Nelson, was surely good enough for their successors.

Footnote 37:

Old dictionaries give “to bowse” as meaning “to drink hard.” The
correct etymology might lie in this direction.

Not in many directions do I find new readings of old terms. As a rule, where the feature has disappeared the term has gone with it. Where the expression is retained the meaning is more or less identical with the original words. A few exceptions may be quoted: “Bittacle” was anciently the name of the binnacle; obviously derived from the French _habitacle_ (a small habitation). “Caboose” was formerly the name of the galley or kitchen of small merchantmen. Falconer spells it “coboose,” and describes it as a sort of box or house to cover the chimney of some merchant ships. Previous to the introduction of the caboose, the furnaces for cooking were, in three-deckers, placed on the middle deck; in two-decked ships in the forecastle; and, adds my authority (the anonymous author of a treatise on shipbuilding, written in 1701), “also in all ships which have forecastles the provisions are there dressed.” “Cuddy” is a forcible, old-fashioned word that has been replaced by the mincing, affected term “saloon.” In the last century it signified “a sort of cabin or cookroom in the fore-part or near the stern of a lighter or barge of burden.” It is curious to note the humble origin of a term subsequently taken to designate the gilded and sumptuous first-class cabin accommodation of the great Indian, American, and Australian ships. “Forecastle,” again, I find defined by old writers as “a place fitted for a close fight on the upper deck forward.” The term was retained to denote the place in which the crew live.

The exploded expressions are numerous. A short list may prove of interest. “Hulling” and “trying” were the words which answer to what we now call “hove-to.” “Sailing large,” having the wind free or quartering; this expression is dead. “Plying” was the old term for “beating”—“we plyed to windward”—_i.e._ “we beat to windward.” The word is obsolete, as is “spooning,” replaced by “scudding.” For “veering” we have substituted “wearing.” Some good strong, expressive phrases have vanished. Nobody nowadays talks of “clawing-off,” though the expression is perfect as representing a vessel clutching and grabbing at the wind in her efforts to haul off from a lee shore. For “shivering” we now say “shaking.” “The top-sail shivers in the wind!” In these days it “shakes.” We no longer speak of the “top-sail atrip,” but of the top-sail hoisted or the yard mast-headed. “Hank for hank,” signifying two ships beating together and always going about at the same moment, so that one cannot get to windward of the other, is now “tack for tack.” We have ceased to “heave out stay-sails:” they are now loosed and hoisted. The old “horse” has made way for the “foot-rope,” though we still retain the term “Flemish horse” for the short foot-rope at the top-sail yard-arms. The word “horse” readily suggests the origin of the term “stirrup,” a rope fitted to the foot-rope that it may not be weighed down too deep by the men standing on it. It is plain that “horse” is owing to the seamen “riding” the yard by it. Anything traversed was called a “horse.” The term is still used. The “round-house” or “coach” yielded to “cuddy,” as “cuddy” has to “saloon.” The poop remains; but the “poop-royal” of the French and the Spaniards, or the “topgallant poop” of our own shipwrights—a short deck over the aftermost part of the poop—has utterly disappeared.

“Whoever were the inventors,” writes Sir Walter Raleigh in “A Discourse of Shipping,” included in his Genuine Remains, “we find that every age hath added somewhat to ships, and to all things else; and in mine own time the shape of our English ships hath been greatly bettered. It is not long since the striking of the Top-mast (a wonderful ease to great Ships both at Sea and in Harbour) hath been devised, together with the Chain Pump, which takes up twice as much water as the ordinary did. We have lately added the Bonnet and the Drabler. To the Courses, we have devised Studding Sails, topgallant Sails, Sprit-sails, Topsails. The Weighing of Anchors by the Capstone is also new. We have fallen into consideration of the length of Cables, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest Winds that can blow.”

Although this passage has reference to improvements made in the fabrics of ships during the closing years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and of the opening of that of James I., it is curious, as illustrative of the conservatism of the sailor, that by omitting the “sprit-sail” these words of Raleigh might stand for the ships of to-day. No sailor unacquainted with the archæology of his own calling would believe that the studding-sail, the bonnet, the drabbler, the chain-pump, the topgallant-sail, and even the sprit-sail (a sail that was in use down to so late a period as the close of the first quarter of the present century) were as old as Raleigh’s hey-day. Certainly the terms given by Sir Walter would furnish us with a clue to the paternity of these cloths. “Studding-sail,” for example. Falconer derives it from _scud_, _stead_, or _steady_. I am inclined to think it is derived from the verb “to stud”—to adorn, to cover, but not necessarily, as Johnson says, “with studs or shining knobs.” It is quite conceivable to think of a forked-beard lifted over a ruff in admiration of canvas that raises the cry, “By’r Lady, but she is now studded with sail!” Assuredly we moderns would not regard a studding-sail as a steadying sail in any sense of the word. The “bonnet” mentioned by Raleigh is an additional piece of canvas made to lace on to the foot of a sail. The term _bonnet_ applied to a thing worn at the _foot_ advises us of an ironical derivative. But of “drabbler” the etymology is obvious. To drabble is to wet, to befoul. Now the drabbler is an additional piece of canvas laced to the bonnet, and necessarily coming very low, unquestionably takes its name from “drabbling”—getting wet. The sprit-sail and sprit-top-sail are among the vanished details; so indeed is the sprit-sail-yard, which may be said to have been conquered, like a cold young virgin, by the invention of “whiskers”—small booms or irons, one on each side the bowsprit, and formerly projecting from the _cat-heads_, whence possibly the term. Of many sea-expressions the origin is sufficiently transparent. I offer a few examples. “Bilge” is the part of a vessel’s bottom which begins to round upwards. The word is corrupted from the old “bulge, the outermost and lowest part of a ship, that which she bears upon when she lies on the ground.” “Butt” is the joining of two planks endways. “To start a butt” is to loosen the end of a plank where it unites with another. This word is got from “abut.” “Chock-a-block,” said when anything is hoisted by a tackle as high as the block will let it go. Chock here means choke, and in that sense is implied in such expressions as “chock-aft,” “chock-home,” etc. Formerly “jib” was spelt “gyb.” A vessel in running is said to “gybe” or “jibe” when the wind gets on the lee side of her fore and aft sails and blows them over. As this in the old days of square rigs and “mizon yards” would be peculiar to the “gyb” or “jib,” the expression is sufficiently accounted for. “To stay” is to tack; a ship “in stays” is a ship in the act of tacking. I interpret “to stay” by the verb “to stop;” “she is staying”—she is stopping; “in stays”—in the act of stopping.[38] “Tack” is the weather lower corner of a square-course when set. “To tack” may be accepted as metaphorically expressing the action of rounding into the wind in the direction of the tacks. “topgallant,” says Johnson, “is proverbially applied to anything elevated or splendid,” and quotes from L’Estrange: “I dare appeal to the consciences of topgallant sparks.” Prior to the introduction of topgallant sails, there was nothing higher than the topsails. Taking “topgallant” as of proverbial application to whatever is elevated, if not splendid, one easily sees how the topgallant fabric of a ship—its sail, mast, and gear—obtained the name it is known by. “To luff” is to put the helm down, so as to bring the vessel closer to the wind. This word is manifestly taken from “loof,” which in olden times was the term applied to the after-part of the bows of a ship. “Quick-work” was the name given to that part of a ship’s sides which is above the channel-wales. “’Tis commonly perform’d with Firdeal,” says an old writer, “which don’t require the fastening nor the Time to work it, as the other parts, but is Quicker done.” The ancient spelling gives us “halyards” for “halliards”—ropes and tackles for hoisting sails and yards. To hale is to haul; so that “halyards,” “halliards,” is _ben trovato_.[39]

Footnote 38:

This may seem too obvious; but meanings may often be sought a great
deal too deep. “To bring a ship upon the stays” formerly signified to
luff till the vessel lost all way.

Footnote 39:

“Dead-eyes” were originally called “dead man’s eyes.” They are blocks
with holes in them for setting up the rigging with.

In old marine narratives and novels the term “lady’s hole” frequently occurs. I was long bothered by this expression, which I indirectly gathered to signify a sort of cabin; but in what part of the ship situated, and why so called, I could not imagine, until in the course of my reading I lighted upon a description of a man-of-war of 1712, in which it is stated that “the lady’s hole” is a place for the gunner’s small stores, built between the partners of the mainmast, and looked after by a man named “a lady,” “who is put in by turns to keep the gun-room clean.” Terms of this kind are revelations in their way, as showing for the most part the sort of road the marine philologist must take in his search after originals and derivatives. A vessel is said to be “hogged” when the middle part of her bottom is so strained as to curve _upwards_. To the shape of a hog’s back, therefore, is this expression owing. But the etymology of the word “sagged,” which expresses the situation of a vessel when her bottom curves _downwards_ through being strained, I am unable to trace.[40] “Gangway” means the going-way—the place by which you enter or quit a ship. “Gudgeons”—braces or eyes fixed to the stern-post to receive the pintles of a rudder, I find the meaning of in the old spelling for the same thing, “gougings”—the eye being _gouged_ by the pintle. “Lumpers” is a name given to dock-labourers who load or discharge vessels; it was their custom to contract to do the work by the _lump_, and hence the word. “Stevedore” (one whose occupation is to stow cargoes) originates with the Spanish _estibador_, likewise a stower of cargoes. The etymology of certain peculiarly nautical expressions in common use on shipboard must be entirely conjectural. Take “swig off”—_i.e._ to pull upon a perpendicular rope, the end of which is led under a belaying-pin. The old readings give it as “swag off,” “swagging off.” The motion of this sort of pulling is of a swaggering kind, and I have little doubt that the expression of “swig,” or “swag,” comes from “swaggering.”[41] “Tail on, tally on!” the order for more men to haul upon a rope, possibly expresses its origination with some clearness. “Tail on!”—lengthen the tail of pullers; “Tally on!”—add men in a countable way. It is usual to speak of a ship as being “under way.” It should, I think, be “under weigh.” The expression is wholly referable to the situation of a ship in the act of moving after her anchor has been lifted or “weighed.” Similarly should it be, “the anchor is aweigh,” not the anchor is “away”—the mate’s cry from the forecastle when the anchor is atrip or off the ground.

Footnote 40:

To _sag_ used to mean “to hang as a bag on one side.” I cannot find
anything in this definition to correspond with the sea-term. It
suggests the etymology, however, of the phrase “to sag to leeward,”
applicable to a ship trending leewardly through the action of waves
and wind whilst sailing.

Footnote 41:

Since this was written I find in Bailey, “To swag: to force or bear
downwards as a weight does to hang on.” This settles the paternity of
“swig.”

Blocks, a very distinctive feature in the equipment of a vessel, get their names in numerous cases from their shape or conveniency. A _cant_-block is so called because in whalers it is used for the tackles which cant or turn the whale over when it is being stripped of its blubber; a _fiddle_-block, because it has the shape of that instrument; a _fly_-block, because it shifts its position when the tackle it forms a part of is hauled upon; _leading_-blocks, because they are used for guiding the direction of any purchase; _hook_-blocks, because they have a hook at one end; _sister_-blocks, because they are two blocks formed out of one piece of wood, and suggest a sentimental character by intimate association; _snatch_-blocks, because a rope can be _snatched_ or whipped through the sheave without the trouble of reeving; _tail_-blocks, because they are fitted with a short length or _tail_ of rope by which they are lashed to the gear; _shoulder_-blocks, because their shape hints at a _shoulder_, there being a projection left on one side of the shell to prevent the falls from jamming. In this direction the marine philologist will find his work all plain sailing. The sources whence the sails, or most of them, take their appellations are readily grasped when the leading features of the apparently complicated fabric on high are understood. The _stay-sails_ obtain their names from the stays on which they travel. “Top-sail” was so entitled when it was literally the top or uppermost sail. The origin of the word “royal”[42] for the sail above the topgallant-sail we must seek in the fancy that found the noble superstructure of white cloths _crowned_ by that heaven-seeking space of canvas.

Footnote 42:

This sail was, on its introduction, called “topgallant-royal.”

The etymology of “hitches” is not far to seek. But first of the “hitch” itself. “_To hitch_, to catch, to move by jerks.” I know not where it is used but in the following passage—nor here know well what it means:

‘Whoe’er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides in a verse, or _hitches_ in a rhyme.’—POPE.

So writes Dr. Johnson. Had he looked into the old “Voyages,” he would have found “hitch” repeated very often indeed.[43] From the nautical standpoint, he defines it accurately enough as “to catch.” Pope’s use of the term puzzled the Doctor, and he blundered into “to move by jerks.” But Pope employs it as a sailor would; he _hitches_ the culprit in a line—that is, takes an intellectual “turn” with his verse about him, or, as the poet puts it, suffers the person to “hitch” himself. To hitch is to fasten, to secure a rope so that it can run out no further. From “hitch” proceed a number of terms whose paternity is very easily distinguished. The “Blackwall hitch” takes its name from the famous point of departure of the vanished procession of Indiamen and Australian liners;[44] the “harness hitch,” from its form, which suggests a bit and reins; “midshipman’s hitch,” from the facility with which it may be made; “rolling hitch,” because it is formed of a series of rolling turns round the object it is intended to secure, and other rolling turns yet over its own part; a “timber hitch,” because of its usefulness in hoisting spars and the like through the ease of its fashioning and the security of its jamming. The etymology of knots, again, is largely found in their forms. “The figure-of-eight knot” is of the shape of the figure eight; the diamond readily suggests the knots which bear its name (single and double diamond-knots); the “Turk’s-head knot” excellently imitates a turban. To some knots and splices the inventors have given their names, such as “Elliot’s splice” and “Matthew Walker” knot. The origin of this knot is thus related by a contributor to the _Newcastle Weekly Chronicle_:—

Footnote 43:

Indeed, any old Dictionary would have supplied the meaning.

Footnote 44:

As does the “Blackwall lead,” signifying a rope taken under a pin.

“Over sixty years ago an old sailor, then drawing near to eighty years of age, said that when he was a sailor-boy there was an old rigger, named Matthew Walker, who, with his wife, lived on board an old covered hulk, moored near the Folly End, Monkwearmouth Shore; that new ships when launched were laid alongside of this hulk to be rigged by Walker and his gang of riggers; that also old ships had their rigging refitted at the same place; and that Matthew Walker was the inventor of the lanyard knot, now known by the inventor’s name wherever a ship floats.”

It has been suggested that “knot,” the sailor’s word for the nautical mile, springs from the small pieces of knotted stuff, called _knots_, inserted in the log-line for marking the progress of a ship through the water. It is worth noting, however, that in the old “Voyages” the word _knot_, as signifying a mile, never occurs. It seems reasonable to suppose that it is a word not much older than the close of the last century.

Amongst puzzling changes in the sea-language must be classed the names of vessels. “Yacht” has been variously defined: as “a small ship for carrying passengers;” as “a vessel of state.” The term is now understood to mean a pleasure craft. “Yawl” was formerly a small ship’s boat or a wherry: it has become the exclusive title of yachts rigged as cutters, but carrying also a small sail at the stern, called a mizzen. The “barge” was a vessel of state, furnished with sumptuous cabins, and canopies and cushions, decorated with flags and streamers, and propelled by a band of rowers. This hardly answers to the top-sail barges and dumb-barges of to-day! The word “bark” has been Gallicized into “barque,” possibly as a marine protest against the mis-application as shown in these lines of Byron—

“My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;”

Or the—

“My bark is my bride!”

of the sea-song. By bark the poets intend any kind of ship you please: but to Jack it implies a particular rig. The Americans write “bark” for “barque,” and rightly; for though Falconer says that “bark is a general name given to small ships,” he also adds: “It is, however, peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry three masts without a mizzen top-sail.” The “pink” is another craft that has “gone over.” Her very narrow stern supplied the name, pink having been used in the sense of small, as by Shakespeare, who speaks of “pink-eyne,” small eye. The “tartan,” likewise, belongs to the past as a rig: a single mast, lateen yard and bowsprit. The growth of our ancestors’ “frigott,” too, into the fire-eating _Saucy Arethusas_ of comparatively recent times, is a story full of interest.

I have but skimmed a surface whose depths should honestly repay careful and laborious dredging. The language of the sea has entered so largely into common and familiar speech ashore,[45] that the philologist who neglects the mariner’s talk will struggle in vain in his search after a mass of paternities, derivatives, and the originals, and even the sense, of many every-day expressions. It is inevitable that a maritime nation should enlarge its shore vocabulary by sea terms. The eloquence of the forecastle is of no mean order, and in a hundred directions Jack’s expressions are matchless for brevity, sentiment and suggestion. But the origin and rise of the marine tongue is also the origin and rise of the British navy, and of the fleets which sail under the red ensign. The story of the British ship may be followed in the maritime glossaries, and perception of the delicate shades and lights, of the subtleties, niceties and discriminations of the ocean dialect is a revelation of the mysteries of the art of the shipwright, and the profession of the seaman.

Footnote 45:

Take as a single example the expression “The devil to pay.” To “pay”
is to pour melted pitch into a seam for the purposes of caulking. The
“devil” is a name given by caulkers to a particular seam hard to get
at. Hence, “There is the devil to pay, and no pitch hot.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_THEN AND NOW._

The occasional stranding of an ocean steamer, and the consequent transhipment or landing of the passengers, furnishes about the best illustration to be found of the extraordinary inconvenience that delay, in these days of swift and sure despatch, carries with it. The immense discomfort experienced is really a tribute to the management of the people who undertake to convey passengers. We are so habituated to precision, we are so used to confidently count not only on the hour but on the moment even of our arrival and departure, that a single failure is as much felt as though something had gone wrong in nature; and a small shock of earthquake is not more startling than detention for a day in a voyage round the world.

I was in the neighbourhood of the Downs not long since; it was blowing a fresh breeze from the westward, and I believe there could not have been less than three hundred vessels at anchor: ships of all kinds, from the large three-masted vessel down to the billyboy, from the high, light, slate-coloured steamer, down to the little schooner loaded to her ways with salt. There they lay, and there a goodly number of them had lain for some days. When they should start for their three hundred destinations depended entirely upon the wind. It was like a picture out of an ancient sea-book, an old-world pageant, with something of irony in what you could not but regard as its affected correspondence with times whose true spirit found interpretation in a large steamer of the National line majestically stemming at ten knots into the wind’s eye. Taking the first volume that comes to hand from a row of maritime records, and opening it at hazard, my eye lights on this: “Jan. 6, 1771.—The wind having shifted to the East, upwards of four hundred and fifty sail of ships, outward bound, which had been detained by the westerly winds many weeks, sailed from the Downs.” 1771, and I, writing this in the close of 1886, am fresh from beholding just such another spectacle! How eloquent are time’s comments! how everywhere, throughout all things, is old human nature breaking out! No need to wade through history to remark the character of survivals and recurrences, to note where the echoes die or where the reverberations gather fresh volume. Study the mighty page of the sea. The years, to be sure, write no wrinkles on its azure brow, but every ripple is a library, and there are more meanings in it than herrings. But to be windbound! The traveller scarcely knows the meaning of the word in this age. To lie off Deal for a space of time longer than a New Zealand steamer occupies in measuring the distance betwixt Tilbury and Wellington! Why, in these days you may be stranded thrice, thrice transhipped, and yet reach your destination in the time a ship took in the age of the fine old English gentleman to drop down to Gravesend and let go her anchor in the Downs.

Henry Fielding, when he started on his voyage to Lisbon, left his house on Wednesday, June 26, 1754. He arrived at Rotherhithe in two hours, and immediately went on board, expecting to sail next morning. On Sunday, June 30, the ship “fell down” to Gravesend. Next day she got as far as the Nore, and brought up. Tuesday, July 2, they again set sail, and anchored off Deal; weighed on the 4th, and after a short struggle anchored again off Deal. Started on the 6th, and on the 11th “came to an anchor at a place called Ryde.” On the 22nd they fell down to St. Helen’s, and on the 25th were off the island of Portland, “so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton,” and anchored in Torbay. Started again August 1. On the 3rd the captain took an observation, and discovered that Ushant bore some leagues northward from him. So that it took Fielding thirty-eight days to sail from Rotherhithe to Ushant! The voyage to New Zealand is now performed in two days less.[46]

Footnote 46:

It does not seem that the _Lisbon Packet_ forty-eight years later was
much superior to the vessel described by Fielding, to judge from
Byron’s verses written in 1809.

“Hey day! call you that a cabin?
Why ’tis hardly three feet square!
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in:
Who the deuce can harbour there?
‘Who, sir? plenty—
Nobles twenty
Did at once my vessel fill’—
Did they? Jesus,
How you squeeze us!
Would to God they did so still!
Then I’d ’scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship _Lisbon Packet_.”

But the singular slowness of this journey down the Channel is by no means the strangest feature of Fielding’s voyage, in respect, I mean, of the contrasts established by the great master’s narrative. A man proposing a trip to Lisbon nowadays, can, if he likes, choose as a ship a fabric of above three thousand tons, with a spacious and richly decorated saloon illuminated by electric lights, a table as elegantly and hospitably furnished as that of any first-rate hotel ashore, numerous waiters to fly at his bidding, a comfortable bedroom fitted with a wire-wove mattrass and a hair bed. He may quench his thirst with choice of twenty refreshing drinks at a bar. The captain and officers are as much distinguished for their courtesy as for their seafaring qualities. The ship is despatched with the punctuality of a mail train; there is nothing in head winds or boisterous weather to detain her, and she commonly arrives at her destination before she is due. Fielding’s ship was a vessel not at all unlike one of the scores of sailing colliers which to this day go on staggering down the North Sea, laden with coals from Newcastle or Sunderland. Her master was so great a ruffian that Fielding has drawn the figure of no completer character of that kind in any of his novels, not excepting “Jonathan Wild.” When the novelist ventured mildly to complain of the long detention at Rotherhithe, this brutal skipper, in whose mouth every other word was an oath, declared that had he known Mr. and Mrs. Fielding were not to be pleased he would not have carried them for five hundred pounds. “He added,” says Fielding, “many asseverations that he was a gentleman, and despised money, not forgetting several hints of the presents which had been made him for his cabin, of twenty, thirty, and forty guineas, by several gentlemen, over and above the sum for which they had contracted.” The size and comfort of the accommodation may be conjectured from what Fielding says of the captain’s snoring: “he loved to indulge himself in morning slumbers, which were attended with a wind-music much more agreeable to the performer than to the hearers, especially such as have, as I had, the privilege of sitting in the orchestra.” The passage money was five pounds a head, and it was expected that passengers fed themselves. Fielding provided tea and wine, hams and tongues, and a number of live chickens and sheep; in truth, says he, “treble the quantity of provisions which could have supported the persons I took with me.” A sample is given of the captain’s politeness. I omit the wicked words. Fielding had objected to his cabin being littered with bottles. “Your cabin!” repeated he many times; “no, ’tis my cabin! Your cabin! I have brought my hogs to a fair market. I suppose, indeed, you think it your cabin and your ship, by your commanding in it! but I will command in it! I will show the world I am the commander, and nobody but I! Did you think I sold you the command of the ship for that pitiful thirty pounds? I wish I had not seen you nor your thirty pounds aboard of her.” To appreciate all this it is necessary the reader should imagine himself dying of dropsy as Fielding was, seeking in poverty a brief prolongation of life in a more genial climate than that of England, his wife prostrated with sea-sickness and the agonies of tooth-ache! It is well that those days are dead and gone. Hundreds of us are every year going abroad for health;—think of embarking on that painful quest as the invalid of a century ago did—in a ship of probably a hundred tons burden, commanded by a pitiless, foul-mouthed bully, and worked by men who, to use Fielding’s own expression, seemed “to glory in the language and behaviour of savages!”

It is fair to admit, however, that much of the misery endured by the sea-borne passenger was, in those and later times, limited to the short service ships. It is true that on the American route the vessels continued small and wretched down to the present century. For instance, you read of two hundred Highland emigrants embarking for Boston in a snow—a kind of brig—of one hundred and forty tons. A few years ago I was in company with an old gentleman who, pointing to a small barque lying moored alongside a wharf, told me that he sailed to New York in her in 1836, and that she was esteemed a high-class commodious passenger-vessel even in those days.[47] But it must be admitted that at the period of Fielding’s voyage there were ships trading to the East and West Indies of a bulk and beauty which might justly entitle them still to admiration. The craft of both the Dutch and East India Companies were as capacious and seaworthy as ships of the State: their forecastle companies were abundantly and highly disciplined; their commanders of the roughly polite type, excellently represented by the heroic old Commodore Dance. Their round-houses, or great cabins, were exceedingly handsome apartments, plentifully embellished with carpets, mirrors, flowers, hand-painted panels, and in other ways richly decorated. Such were the ships which carried Clive and Hastings, and such they remained down to the time of the fine old Earl of Balcarres.

Footnote 47:

The following lines, published in 1832, and therefore referring to
shipboard life of a date comparatively recent, illustrate the
sufferings of passengers in the direction of the accommodation
supplied:

“Soon as the twilight closed and I was able,
I left the cuddy and the folks at table
Reading the news; and heard not what they read,
For all I wanted was to find my bed:
Which, after searching ’tween decks all around,
Under a pile of hammocks there I found
All my clean sheets were scattered ’mongst the boxes,
My blankets, too, that I had bought at Cox’s,
Laid in a corner where a dog had lain,
And, curse the dogs! they’d stole my counterpane.
I managed to obtain a berth that night
To sleep in, but they woke me ere ’twas light;
A noise above, and from below a groan,
I heard a voice say, ‘Hang that holy-stone!’”

It was reserved apparently for the days of the application of steam to ships for owners of vessels to discover that passengers embarking on a short voyage stood in as much need of comfort and security as passengers embarking on a long voyage; and that more misery could be packed into the run between Dover and Calais than could be found in a journey of three years round the globe.[48] How much of suffering went to such a trip as that from Rotherhithe to Lisbon may be read, very much at large, in Fielding’s wonderful narrative—the more wonderful when we reflect that the hand that penned it was a dying man’s. Nor is it hard to collect similar experiences of the old passages to Ireland, to Scotland, or to near ports, such as from London to Yarmouth or from Southampton to Plymouth. The risks, the horrors, were increased by the character of the people who had charge of the vessels. There were no Board of Trade examinations in those days; no standards of excellence; no special qualifications insisted upon. That the British mariner was always a good seaman I should be the last to deny; but he swore, he drank, he was rude, tempestuous, ruffianly, and little fitted—I am speaking of the coasting trade—to do the honours of the cabin table, or to provide by his attention and courtesy for the needs of ladies and children. Henry Taylor, writing in 1811, says, “The ship in which I engaged belonged to Hull. The captain was one who indulged himself in bed during night, in every situation; the mate—a middle-aged man—was much addicted to strong liquor. In the middle of the night, when the ship was in a perilous place, the master went to bed, and the chief mate invited the crew into the cabin to drink. In a short time he fell stupidly drunk down into the steerage. The sailors dared not arouse the master, and so took their chance of letting the ship run on until the watch was out.” On another occasion Taylor was seaman in a ship in stormy weather. The captain went below to his cabin and “turned in;” the mate, standing on the windlass end, fell asleep; a young man at the helm suddenly cried out, “We are running too far in!” Taylor seized the lead, found little more than three fathoms, and sung out to the other to put the helm hard down. “So stupidly drunk and asleep was the mate that we were hauling the head yards about before he awoke.” Such mariners must stand as representatives, and how passengers suffered when they took passage in vessels commanded by men of this pattern is only too painfully told in the relations of shipwrecks.

Footnote 48:

The duration of the Channel passage depended of course upon the wind.
Prince Charles and Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, sailed at six in the
morning and arrived at two in the afternoon. Sometimes the passage
occupied twelve hours, sometimes twenty-four. A fresh favourable
breeze made the journey a comparatively rapid one. There is a quaint
entry touching this passage in Dr. Ed. Browne’s Journal (1663–4).
“April 6. Betimes in the morning, wee set sayle for Calais in the
packet boat; wee gave five shillings a piece for our passage and
having a fair winde, wee got in four houres’ time, into Calais roade,
from whence a shallop fetch’d us to shoare. At our entryng of the port
wee pay’d threepence a piece for our heads; they searched my
portmantle at the gate and the custom house, for which I was to pay 5
sols.”

Take a single incident of a gale a century ago. A vessel was proceeding on her voyage from Chester to Dublin. Her provisions, which at the start had been all too scanty for “the vast number of souls she took out with her”—as the record describes them—had been stowed on deck, to make room below for the passengers. In a very short while the sea washed them overboard. “What followed may be better imagined than expressed. The wretches were crammed into the hold, without light or air, and all on board the ship without bread or water, with scarce any other prospect of seeing an end to their sufferings but by the ship’s foundering.” After forty-eight hours of misery the captain made shift to enter a small Welsh port, but the distress of the passengers continued, for the village or hamlet was too small to afford them either provisions or accommodation. What became of them is not told.

Contrast such an experience with the cabins and food of a Holyhead boat—the swift journey, be the weather what it will, the brilliant, hospitable, comfortable hotels on either side the water! Or read the account of the loss of the _Union_, the regular packet between Dover and Calais, in 1792, side by side with the description of the last steamer built for the Chatham and Dover Railway Company: how, through unnecessary delays, she had suffered the time of high tide to slip past; how, in endeavouring to turn to windward, she had missed stays, fouled the south pier, and lay beating there; how, by a miracle, the crew and passengers were rescued, but after embarking next morning in the _Pitt_, Captain Sharp, were wrecked afresh, “being driven on shore at the north head, in a violent gale, but fortunately no person was lost.” One finds in such narratives as this the reason why Frenchmen for ages lived in ignorance of the true character of the English, and wrote fancifully of boule-dogs, ros-bif, Smeetfield, and Goddam. The fact is, they _durst not cross_.

Take another wreck of a Dublin boat—the _Charlemont_ packet—a memorable item in the catalogue of maritime disasters. She sailed on a Wednesday, and managed to reach Dublin Bay, but was driven back by the weather. She started afresh on Friday, with the number of her passengers increased to one hundred and twenty, and was again forced to put back. The people implored the master to make for Holyhead, but he said he was ignorant of the coast. After a while, however, he yielded; the mate, deceived by some lights, mistook his course, the vessel struck and went to pieces. Of the passengers, sixteen only escaped, one of them being Captain Jones, a son of Lord Ranelagh. Think of an Irish “mimber” in these days, thirsting to be in his place at Westminster at a given hour, forced to take ship after the manner of his ancestors! A gale of wind would make a large difference in the number of votes, and at times might prove superior to the closure.